Artist

Karen Yasinsky

USA

“Life happens quietly albeit strangely.” K.Y.

At the center of Yasinsky’s work you find an emotional space. The action of her films, quiet as it is, works to describe this emotional space. Unconcerned with the car chases, shoot outs and glass slippers that give most films their dramatic arc, the actions of her characters seek to describe the emotional realities of the lives we live. Not many of us will find ourselves high-tailing it across the bad lands with our good buddy as legions of law enforcement vehicles nip at our tail fins. That just doesn’t happen all that often. Sorry. So Yasinsky’s films show you what will happen. You will find yourself alone. You will experience the comfort of others. Attraction, repulsion, joy, repression, indifference – they are the stars of the show. And if you are alive, you will know them.

So what makes these simple realities so captivating on film? Two things: distillation and mystery. The moving force behind the actions of the characters is the distillation of emotional reality into gesture. A simple movement can describe with eerie precision a state of the heart. There is an abiding sense of underlying mystery in Yasinsky’s work, as she describes these events without judgment, but rather a profound respect for their and our oddity. And this is the glue: oddity. If you yourself are not strange [which of course you are, but even if like most of us you do not think you are] surely your experience of this life is. And that is what we share.